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NASA probe performs most distant flyby of spacerock

The NASA spacecraft that studied Pluto has successfully performed its flypast of Ultima Thule, an icy rock in the outer solar system. Scientists hope the mission will help them understand how planets were formed.

A NASA spacecraft has buzzed by an icy space rock in the distant reaches of the solar system on Tuesday on a mission aimed at gathering clues about how planets were formed.

The New Horizons probe, which studied Pluto in 2015, flew within 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers) of Ultima Thule at 32,000 miles per hour, making it the most distant and possibly oldest space object ever visited by a spacecraft.

NASA confirmed in a tweet on Tuesday that the spacecraft had survived the flyby.

An early image of the rock was tweeted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, as data trickled in.

Scientists hope the 20-mile-long rock located more than four billion miles from Earth in the uncharted Kuiper Belt, a disc of small bodies left over from the formation of the solar system, will provide information of how planets took shape.

"The object is in such a deep freeze that it is perfectly preserved from its original formation," said lead scientist Alan Stern. "Everything we are going to learn about Ultima – from its composition to its geology to how it was originally assembled, whether it has satellites and an atmosphere and those kinds of things – are going to teach us about the original formation conditions of objects in the solar system."

Frontier of planetary science

The spacecraft was set to take 900 pictures of the Ultima Thule within a few seconds during its flypast at 12:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (0533 UTC). Confirmation that it had survived intact was only received by NASA some 10 hours later.

Blurred and pixelated images released Monday from 1.2 million miles away appeared to show a peanut-shaped blob, not a round space rock. Clearer images are expected to arrive in the next few days.

Pictures taken from 1.2 million miles away show a peanut shape, rather than a round rock

Scientists did not yet know about Ultima Thule when the New Horizons probe was launched in 2006 on a mission to study Pluto and its five moons. The space rock located 1 billion miles beyond Pluto was first discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

Only tears of sand remain

Earth observation satellites such as the European Space Agency's Proba-V collect daily images that allow for the tracking of environmental changes over time. The images above - taken in April 2014, July 2015 and January 2016 (left to right) - offer crystal-clear insight into the gradual evaporation of Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second largest lake - due at least in part to climate change.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

The beast has awoken

No matter how long volcanoes sleep, they're always in a bad mood when they wake up. The International Space Station was passing overhead when the Sarychev volcano, located in the Kuril Islands of Russia, erupted in 2009. Astronauts were able to snap a picture through a hole in the clouds. From dense ash to clouds of condensed water, virtually all natural phenomena can be examined from outer space.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

Don't play with fire

Every year, wildfires devastate the landscape - and ecology - in numerous countries around the world. Too often, these are caused by humans. This was also the case in Indonesia, where farmers burned peat rainforest areas for agriculture. On the island of Borneo and Sumatra, satellites detected fire hot spots in September 2015, and the plume of grey smoke that triggered air quality alerts.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

German kids misbehaved

In Germany, parents warn their children that if they don't finish their meals, it's going to rain. And indeed, in 2013 it rained, so much that some of central Europe's major rivers overflowed their banks. As shown in this image from 2013, the Elbe burst its banks following unprecedented rainfall. In the photo, muddy water covers the area around Wittenberg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

At the eye of the hurricane

A strong storm can cause irreparable damage through intense winds and storm surges from the sea. Space-based information is crucial in following development of such storms: intensity, the direction it's moving, wind speed … in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico, this satellite image helped determine how tropical storm Sandra reached winds of 160 kilometers per hour by November 25, 2015.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

Melting away from under us

Satellites also play a key role in monitoring climate change and, inevitably, the process of melting ice. From space, scientists were able to document how several glaciers around the globe have receded - as well as the subsequent rise in sea level. This photograph, taken from the International Space Station, shows the retreat of the Upsala glacier in Argentine Patagonia from 2002 to 2013.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

Hold your breath!

Dust often covers remote deserts - however, in September 2015, satellites offered this impressive view of Middle East areas enveloped by a dust storm, or haboob, affecting large populated regions. What satellites can observe from space supports air quality sensors on the ground to understand patterns on how the storms start and develop. These findings can improve forecasting methods.

Natural disasters as seen from outer space

'Naked mountain'

These are the words NASA used to describe the lack of snow on California's Mount Shasta, a crucial source of water for the region. Images documenting drought over the past years have consistently been showing brown mountains that should be white, and bare earth where people seek water. As ice melts, drought grows.

Author: Irene Banos Ruiz

Scientists didn't even know about the distant Kuiper Belt until the 1990s.

"This is the frontier of planetary science," said project scientist Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "We finally have reached the outskirts of the solar system, these things that have been there since the beginning and have hardly changed – we think. We will find out."

Another spacecraft, the OSIRIS-REx, broke another record on Monday when it entered the orbit of the asteroid Bennu some 70 million miles from Earth. At only 500 meters in diameter, it is the smallest space object ever to be orbited by a spacecraft.